Wednesday, 22 September 2010

Back to work for the Swansea Schools

Ysgol Penyrheol

After the long summer break, it was great to get back to work on the project and to be welcomed warmly by the kids at Ysgol Penyrheol. In their new IT suite, we had plenty of room to move and lots of lovely computers that worked perfectly. Apart from having to transfer the students' photos to their workstations, there were no hitches and everybody was able to learn the processes of downloading images from the camera and making folders in which to place them. In fact we got on better than is usual at this point in the schedule.

Above: Penyrheol students concentrate on making difficult choices

By the end of the session, we had finished the main jobs for the day and had begun the task of making the tricky choices of which of the hundreds of photostaken during the five field trips should be put in the folder marked '20 best'. It's always such an important part of the project and one that needs care. What's important is to choose ones that each photographer really likes, whilst making sure the quality is good – sharp, level, well exposed – and there is a range of different subjects. So, there are lots of different things to bear in mind.

Ysgol Penybryn

There was also a warm welcome for us at Penybryn School. It was a pleasure to meet everybody again after the holiday.

Above: Penybryn practice on the computers

Our task was similar to Penyrheol's and all the students were ready to go. However, there was a problem with the IT equipment, which slowed everything down. Some of students managed to see their pictures and others were able to observe, but, in the end we had to make different arrangements. A member of staff, using the new CHRT provided computer, will go through each student's pictures with them, choosing their best 20 and putting them into a special folder. So, by our next session, we should be ready to take on the next stage of dividing those pictures in two for the final selection. Dealing with the class in two halves will also help with the workload, whilst utilising the fastest of the computers.